innocence is kinky (album, 2013)

Innocence Is Kinky (LP/CD/mp3, 2013) is out now on vinyl, cd and mp3 via Rune Grammofon. There have been some great Norwegian reviews already, and here is an interview I did too.

The album is heavily influenced by my work with sound installations. In 2011, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter commissioned a site-specific sound installation, and I decided to work with the idea of the female face on-screen as presented in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s La passion de Jeanne d’Arc. This film works primarily as a close study of Jeanne d’Arc’s face. The sound installation work continued this study, but at the same time allowed the film to be interrupted by other films, other faces: an overexposed Paris Hilton in night vision, Nancy from a Nightmare on Elm Street laying in a bathtub, reeking with fear, the notable nihilist-porn pioneer Sasha Grey, Mia in Fish Tank running away in her grey tracksuit armour. Read more about the sound installation here.

While writing and recording the sound installation, I was also touring a lot, and played the relatively quiet material from my previous album, Viscera, in various clubs and festivals throughout in Europe and Australia. I found myself getting more and more aggressive on stage with this material, wanting to play louder instead of working with acoustic, hushed soundscapes, but I didn’t know how. I wanted to sing louder, channel this energy, sharpen all edges, loosen the structures.

I realised I’d been working with the male gaze so much in my work with Joan of Arc’s face, reality tv and porn – which very much brought a forced male position into the music. I was drawn to music very much exploring that position – particularly Nick Cave, Blixa Bargeld and Michael Gira. To work with these powerful expressions – and failing miserably with my voice and body – was creating a specific energy I found necessary for the album.

The album was recorded in Toybox Studios, Bristol, with the excellent producer and musician John Parish, whose work I’ve been a fan of for a long time.